A strange silence

Where isn't there a resounding Christian voice protesting the Iraq war?

Dec 28, 2004

After the U.S. military began its assault on insurgents in Fallujah, we received an email from a reader asking, “And where are the churches?” The writer’s assumption was that churches should be rising up with moral outrage at the destruction of an Iraqi city and the forced evacuation of its citizens.

Indeed, where are the churches? Why isn’t there a resounding Christian voice protesting this war as it did the Vietnam war? The times are very different from the 1960s. There is not the same culture of protest that was honed by the civil rights movement. There is no military draft to stoke the fires of protest. There is also a hopeless sense that those in power are not listening to critical voices.